Clam Jamfry

Douglas Wilson

Many are familiar with Judy Rogers' music because of her albums for kids. But let me recommend her album of psalms, Never Be Shaken. Some of it is not my cup of tea, but if you enjoy acoustic music deftly played, and psalms with a Celtic touch, you can get it here. You can obtain it from judyrogers.com.

A husband's first duty is to understand that he is in fact a husband, which is another way of saying that he needs to understand his profound identification with his wife. The first words out of Adam's mouth were "bone of bone, flesh of my flesh," a love poem. He was not welcoming a new roommate; he was naming one who had been taken from him in order to be merged back into him in a new, more glorious fashion. God made one into two in order to make the two back into one. Now a husband is commanded to love his wife as he loves his own bodynobody ever hated his own flesh but rather nourishes and cherishes it. Why do some husbands not nourish and cherish their wives? Because they do not believe that their wives are their own body. Which is another way of saying they do not believe the Scriptures.

A sister church of ours in Spokane (also Christ Church) is putting out a periodic audio cassette called St. Anne's Public House. For those of you with a tape player and a commute, this is for you. The format includes interviews, movie reviews, commentary on current events, and more. You can find out more at their websitewww.christkirk.org

The phrase "culture war" has been used a great deal in conservative Christian circles. But in this conflict, we are at a great disadvantage. Our adversaries are fighting on behalf of a certain culture which they have successfully established on the ground. They have their art, music, architecture, philosophers, and more. We Christians are fighting for a Christian culture which no longer exists. And this means that we too frequently find ourselves fighting on behalf of a mere idea. Before we can enlist in the culture war, we have to have a culture. And that culture must be Christian. If it is not Christian, there is no antithesis, and hence no war. If it is Christian in its ideas but not embodied on the ground, then there is no clash, no battleground, where such unlike things can meet. But Christian culture collides with unbelieving culture. And there will be no Christian culture apart from a robust, healthy, believing, faithful covenant renewal worship service, week to week.

I have recently been reading a number of critiques and evaluations of pop culture, including both Roman Catholic and Reformed critics. Let me say with embarrassment that, in this area, the RCs tend to have a much sharper sense of the basic antithesis, and the Reformed have a distinct tendency to metooism. Theologically, this is upside down, but there it is.

Certain luxuries always accompany immaturity. A three-year-old does not have to worry about how the heating bill gets paid, and a five-year-old girl does not have to concern herself with what it will be like to bear children. This immaturity is pleasant enough in its place, but too many of us are tempted to revolt against the creation design which yearns for maturity

As we pray for reformation, and as some of us believe that God is granting it, let us never forget that such a reformation, in arriving, would necessarily arrive in a state of immaturitya toddler reformation. As maturity comes, hard work also comes, decisions come, disagreements come. We think we have achieved a New Testament like-mindedness simply because we are a bunch of three-year-olds in the sandbox. Visualizing a Christian culture for grown-ups takes a lot of faithand nothing is more calculated to bring about intense disagreements now than to describe what that might look like then. "You mean you think we won't be in the sandbox forever?"

E. Michael Jones is a consistently provocative and informative writer. In Monsters from the Id he shows that the horror genre in literature and movies is one that began as the result of the Enlightenment's rejection of the Christian moral order, particularly in sexual matters. Beginning with Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and through Bram Stoker's Dracula, and up through films as recent as the Alien series, Jones shows how the same basic pattern occurs over and over, and I believe he proves the point. Again and again, sexual liberation is followed by the nemesis of horrora cinematic equivalent of syphilus.